Tuesday, January 01, 2013

I'm having some withdrawals today since finishing Louise Erdrich's "The Round House" last night. Good book. I had assumed it was an older novel taking place in 1988 on a North Dakota Indian Reservation. Both my parents roots being in North Dakota and visiting there every single summer and some winters of my childhood, I have related well to Ms. Erdrich's writing ("Master Butcher's Singing Club" though I can't really remember the plot, I know I was sad to have it end). I wouldn't exactly say I was sad for this book to end, because it deals with some pretty awful situations that I wanted to see resolved, and ended quickly and for a happy ending to enfold. There was no happy ending, but clues throughout the book that the boy had a good life in spite of the troubling dilemmas he faced. I always wonder, especially when middle aged women are writing from the perspective of a teenage boy (13), how accurate the thoughts, feelings, and actions are...

Relate well to her writing may not exactly be accurate. I respect her writing and find it wholly engaging. While reading this book I was suddenly overcome with a new, strange thought. That is, I felt guilty (?), responsible (?) that my ancestors (and ones that I am old enough to remember) took land from the Indians in North Dakota. I had never felt personally connected to the tragedy of the Native Americans (sorry Dad). Whether it was legal, or moral, or justifiable by saying, "well some other white folks would've took it," the fact is, we European Americans stole this land and screwed these people over big time.

So, after finishing the story and combing the afterword, jacket covers, title page, I find it was just published in 2012. Surprising.